A few weeks before I attended the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions, I received an email from the Parliament of Religions about grant money for increasing social media presence. "The Parliament is thankful to all those who applied for grants. It was yet another indicator about the vibrancy of the interfaith movement. We learned a great deal. Some organizations which applied actually had larger budgets than the Parliament itself. After reading and evaluating all the applications we settled on 5 organizations which have good plans to grow, were of smaller budget but active. We decided to award them each with the following: 1) A technical consulting grant to train their leadership and volunteers in enhancing their social media outreach. 2) Partial salary for an intern or staff to enhance their social media." I also get a weekly email from Jewish Jobs and see how many organizations are trying to build their social media presence. What are things that an interfaith organization or a religious community can do to increase the engagement of the people who are part of their organization, communicate with the larger community, and further peace and understanding in the world around them? Here are some ideas and a check list of questions to get you started.MISSION and REACH Determine what your social media goals are and who they want to reach.

What is your message?Who do you want to talk to?Do you want to use social media in fundraising?What are the top 10 keywords that you want to be found for or known for?

BIO—USING WORDS TO PAINT A PICTURE

Once you know what you want to say and how to communicate with people you have to decide where you want to share with them and how you want to engage in the communication process.

Where do you want to send the traffic you get from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook?What do you want them to do when they get there?How will you use the bios and profiles to foster community, attract new participants, and engage current families or alumni?

MEDIA CHOICES

Think about the type of media you want to share and which social media sites feature words, images and videos.

Do you have an article or essays that you want to put on a popular blog?Do you have images that would bring people to your website from Instagram, Pintrest, WeHeartIt and other primarily visual sites?Do you have videos of teachings, lectures or conference presentations that would be great on YouTube, Vimeo, attached to LinkedIn, SlideShare, and more?Do you have multimedia capability on your website?Are you focused on a certain age group? Is your community more of a Facebook community or a Snapchat community?

SET UP

Set up bios and profiles on social media. On Twitter you have 140 characters to share your message. Facebook, GooglePlus and Pinterest have several sections with larger word counts of space for you to share your message, mission, and links back to your website. LinkedIn has virtually unlimited space to share your message. If members of your leadership or the organization itself have a book or anthology on Amazon, there is nearly 4000 words worth of space for sharing your message on an Amazon author's page and book page.

Do you have a well edited version of your organizations mission written out in different lengths? Do you have a book?

BLOGGING and GUEST BLOGS

Blogs, online magazine, and news services of course have 500 to ... words worth of space.

Do you have a blog or can you do guest blogs on related sites?Who in your organization will write the blogs?Who will upload, post them and share them on social media?Are there other institutions, universities, or other organizations that would want to share on your site, while you share on their site?Will you blog about community events, life cycles events, and local news?

FREQUENCY

Frequency of posts can also be a consideration.How often can you post on one site?Will you post the same or different content on several different sites?

LEADERSHIP

For a monthly $300 plus depending on frequency, the Creating Calm Network will:

1. Do initial set up of social media accounts.

2. Post daily content on six to fifteen different social media sites, including:FacebookGooglePlusTwitterInstagramPinterestWeHeartItLinkedInYouTubeAbout MeSnapchatPeriscopeLinkedIn blogTumblr blogIssuuSlideshareBehanceAmazon

3. Create content for blogs and cover events for your organization.

4. Create connections for your organization online as well as in the local community through set up of events at bookstores, food stores and other faith groups.

5. One option is to buy a few months of services and then continue to maintain the social media profiles and blogs in-house or yourself. We make it easy for you to continue once the framework has been set up and started.

BOOK PUBLISHING PROJECTS

Is there a Book in your organizations future? We can also lead a project to create an anthology for your organization including, working with members on their essay, editing, and then talking the completed Word document through the publishing process and making the print book and eBook available on Amazon. Follow up on the published book includes launching it and posting on social media for three months after completion.